


Crypsis

by aderyn



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Adaptation, Evolution, Experiment, camouflage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-15
Updated: 2012-12-15
Packaged: 2017-11-21 04:15:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/593348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aderyn/pseuds/aderyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Malaysian orchid mantis, pink.<br/>Malaysian orchid mantis, white.<br/>Adaptability.  Blending.</p>
<p>“Have you thought of yourself,” says Sherlock, “in the context of adaptation?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crypsis

**Author's Note:**

> Written in response to [these beautiful photos of orchid mantis and Professorfangirl's lovely request.](http://professorfangirl.tumblr.com/post/37879676459/thescienceofreality-a-look-at-orchid-mantes-by)

_For Professorfangirl, who also raised them as a child_

_Hymenopus  coronatis._

_Malaysian orchid mantis, pink._

_Malaysian orchid mantis, white._

_The red and white and pink of the four o’clock._

_Mendelian genetics,incomplete dominance._

_Adaptability._

_Blending._

 

Sherlock’s handwriting is beautiful, if illegible.  John can see in it all the feathers and carapaces of his childhood, the cruel spiracles of his middle years, later the bars and knives and needles and guns, the waspish rush of cocaine and the spiderwebs and the sweet perfect threads of deductive salvation.

Rose ink on cream paper. A sketch. Orchid mantes, insects as mirrors. Photographs close by, glossy, new.

“I raised them as a child,” Sherlock says, slips into the kitchen and sits, barefoot. “Not the orchid variety. They’re carnivorous. Mostly.“

“While I was defacing walls and chasing girls,” John says, smiles wry the way he does now, matches the exact tones of these pronouncements.

“Fed one of them by hand, bits of mince,” says Sherlock.  “Named Bishop.”

He can see it, Sherlock with this spindly, carnivorous thing notched between two phalanx-twigs. Mince.  Named Bishop. Too fragile.

“Case?” John says.

“Have you thought of yourself,” says Sherlock, “in the context of adaptation? Criminally and psychologically  and  biologically it’s...”

Brilliant, yes , but that’s not enough, so John says,

“I have, of course; of course I have.”

They‘ve become, he thinks, a whole experiment.  It’s an explosion in here, self-perpetuating--of colour, of chemical, of predator, of petal. Insect and flower and spider and finch, orange-beaked, blooming, off some distant Darwin-haunted island.

John was never going to die; not here; not with so much to turn into.

The light over their table has seen better days.  Sherlock smiles at him over these pretend orchids and it’s...

What experiment.  What crime. Not the strangest thing. No matter which direction the pretending’s in, it’s brilliant. Which the mirror and which the lamp.

“Well,” John says, takes the pen from Sherlock’s hand, puts his fingers where the stems of that fragile flower, all those years ago, hooked and clung, its beautiful eyes on an alien face.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> [Video of orchid mantis on hand](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_jwfKyxBrc)   
> [Orchid mantis and other camouflaged creatures, from the Daily Mail](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1349250/Chameleon-creatures-Photos-Orchid-Mantis-camouflaged-pretenders.html)   
> [Mirabilis jalapa, the four o’clock flower](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirabilis_jalapa)   
> [ Galapagos finches and instant evolution](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/07/060714-evolution.html)


End file.
